Dolphins announcer Zimpfer has come long way from WGPA

Dolphins fans might not have been too thrilled that their team's first-round playoff game was blacked out in the Miami area last Saturday, but Bill Zimpfer probably couldn't have been happier.

As the radio voice of the Dolphins, Zimpfer knows many people who watch telecasts of Dolphins games with the sound turned off, listening to him instead.

But the blackout meant the Freedom High graduate had more listeners than ever. He would have had a total monopoly, except that another announcer with Lehigh Valley roots, Whitehall grad Matt Millen, was doing the game for CBS radio.

"I have people tell me all the time they listen to us," Zimpfer said this week from his farm in suburban East Greenville. "And we've listened to the crowd in the stands during games and they seem to be tuned in to us, too."

Zimpfer, like Millen, is an alumnus of Penn State, but Millen worked his way into the broadcast booth by way of an outstanding college and professional football career.

"I was the backup catcher on on Freedom's 1973 District 11 championship team, but I played behind Rick Frankenfield, which meant my actual game appearances were very rare," Said Zimpfer. "And I was a lineman in football and played both offense and defense, but I might have been one of the worst players you ever saw."

So when Zimpfer was at Penn State, he worked on the student radio station doing football, basketball, baseball and even hockey. When he graduated in 1977, he landed a job with radio station WGPA in Bethlehem, which, at the time, did Lehigh's football games.

"It was a freak thing," Zimpfer said of the break that got him on his way to Miami's broadcast booth. He was asked by the late Bob Wolken, WGPA's program manager if he could fill in if the station ever needed him.

On the first game of 1979 season, regular announcer Dick Gasdaska became ill and Wolken called Zimpfer and hastily arranged to get him down to West Chester for the game.

Zimpfer stayed for 11 years, although those of us who covered Lehigh football back then knew he had the talent to go much further. He joined WIP back when it was still a legitimate radio station featuring disc jockeys like Ken Garland and Wee Willie Weber.

He now works at Oldies 98 in Philadelphia, doing the morning news and sports and commutes to Dolphins games on the weekend.

It's nothing like his commutes to Lehigh games.

"We took kamikaze trips," he recalled. "We never stayed overnight. Even if the game was in Maine, we'd leave at 4 a.m. and then drive back after the game."

Now Zimpfer usually leaves the day before the game and, if he's lucky, he can catch a plane back home after the game ends.

The only drawback is that unlike someone with a similar job like the Eagles' Merrill Reese, Zimpfer hasn't become the well-known personality in the Miami area he might be if he also lived there.

But he's in no hurry to leave his farm where once he and his wife, fellow Freedom grad Diana Stinner, raised chickens and sheep, but now are concentrating on their flock of three children.

But football broadcasting jobs seem to find him. While working Lehigh games, he got permission to fill in on some Penn State broadcasts and went full-time with his alma mater in 1990.

Someone familiar with his work suggested him for the Dolphins job to owner Wayne Huizenga in 1993.

"I sent them a tape and they called me for an interview," Zimpfer said. "I hit the Dolphins at a pretty good time. I got thrown right into the [Dan] Marino mania. There's only been one year when we didn't make it to the playoffs."

The Dolphins are one of only two teams (with the Minnesota Vikings) who have been to the playoffs the past four years.

"You know how it is," Zimpfer said. "You get into the season and, by the 10th game or so, it begins to be a long season. Then the playoffs come and you're recharged again. Now you're saying if we got this far we might as well go to the Super Bowl."

This week, the Dolphins try to take the next step in that direction in Oakland. They won't be home again no matter how long they last in the playoffs. That means no more TV blackouts.

SATURDAY: WATCH: Gee, this is tough: NFL playoffs, of course with Saints-Vikes (12:30 p.m. on Fox) and Dolphins at Raiders (4 p.m. on CBS). TAPE: Thrasher at Flyers (CSN at 7 p.m.) to see if it looks anything like their Friday night game. DON'T WATCH: NCAA Basketball: Akron at Kent (ESPN2 at 5 p.m.) Who?